


the third cry

by madwithmissing



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Lesbian Ebb Petty, POV Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch, baz and ebb best carry on characters prove me wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28662897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madwithmissing/pseuds/madwithmissing
Summary: “You alright?” I hear her ask, voice gentle, and I pull myself back into my body. I don’t answer. I don’t know how I would.Of all the people in all the world, I’m not divulging my deepest emotions to Ebb the goatherd.orbaz is full of emotions and ebb is willing to listen.
Relationships: tyrannus basilton "baz" pitch & ebeneza "ebb" petty
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	1. one

It feels like there’s tape over my mouth.

Or encompassing my brain, squeezing, slowly dissolving everything it touches until nothing is left.

Everywhere I turn, there’s a stop sign blocking me out. I’m stuck on a dead-end street with cones blocking the exit.

I’m not really sure how people express emotion. It’s not like I was taught. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s ingrained within me to keep everything tied up and stored away. Or not to feel at all. 

That method worked for a bit. A good chunk of my life where nothing was anywhere and my heart wasn’t pulsing with convictions and compulsions. (My heart still doesn’t beat now, but that’s different.) 

I wish every day of my life that I could feel nothing again; close the floodgates, pat down the dirt, take the knob off the door, throw it into the ocean, and run far away.

I guess I just wonder what would happen if I tried to take the tape off.

I would love to get into my room. The day’s been long,  _ someone  _ singed my shirtsleeve, and I’ve got a metric shit ton of coursework to get ahead on.

I would love to get into my room without obstacles at every step. First, a bookshelf had fallen directly in front of the doorway of my last class, then someone had spilled something on the Lawn that made the grass combust, and now Simon Snow is leaning on the door to our room and crying. Bunce is next to him, rubbing his back, and I pause for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he whispers, voice sticky with pain, “I just don’t understand why it had to be me.”

Cry #3.

(The 3 Cries of Simon Snow: A Quick Guide for When Your Roommate has a Breakdown

1- a sort of bouncing sob. The kind of cry you do when a pet dies or you get yelled at. This is his most common type and it is not pretty. He goes overboard with it—as he does everything else—and it makes his whole face puffy.

2- a dramatic single tear. He does this mostly when he’s tired of classwork or tired of me. It’s honestly pretty impressive.

3- a silent cry for when you’re in so much pain that your body can’t muster up a theatrical sob. I’ve seen him cry like this twice. 

The first time was on the last day of our first year. He came into our room, sat on his bed without looking up, and cried. The entire time I got ready to go, he held his hand over his mouth and shook a bit. It was the kind of thing I would comment on, be an asshole about, but he looked so pathetic that I couldn’t think of anything to say. I just left him there that day, still bent over his own legs, sniffling. 

I don’t know why he was crying the second time. It was the middle of the night two years ago and I’m sure he thought I was asleep. I just remember looking at him there in the moonlight, eyelashes gleaming, and thinking that I wanted nothing more than to hold him. So, instead, I dug my nails into my palms and folded my pillow over my ears so I couldn’t hear him breathe.

Cry #3 is the worst.)

Without thinking, I walk to the door and Penny just moves them out of the way. No attempt to fight, just a pleading look.  _ Let him be _ .

So I let him be.

I have no idea how to act around Snow when he’s crying like this.

I’m a pathetic excuse for a nemesis.

Gritting my teeth, I walk up the stairs to our room. When I get in, I slump against the door, letting my books fall with a thud. 

Sometimes emotion feels so heavy, I can feel it sitting on my chest. 

Sometimes I fear too much, hate too much, love too much, hold too much back.

Sometimes it feels like I’ll be crushed under the weight of it all and when they find my body, my heart will be sitting motionless in a locked steel box, hiding behind my ribs.

I’ve heard, as everyone eventually does, that the best way to deal with emotion is to get it out. Express it. Pluck it out of the body it’s grown so comfortable in and throw it into the wind. 

In the simplest terms: I need to talk to someone.

When I’ve stopped being able to hear myself think, I go to the pitch. I’m not really someone with cozy safe havens I turn to (unless you count the catacombs, but I’d really rather not), but I figure that the open space could allow me to breathe a bit more. (Crowley, I think I’ve gone insane.)

Some part of my mind reminds me that I have to track down an old textbook I promised my teacher I would find, and I need an essay written on some aspect of history I already know too much about, but I dismiss the thoughts faster than they surface.

I haul my lousy body to the lawn and sit on the bleachers, shivering as the cold metal bench kisses my skin. The sun’s near setting and it shines faintly on the dewy grass. For just a moment, I allow myself to get lost in the light. 

I’m not sure what I’m trying to accomplish here. I’m not sure of the last time I was sure of anything. 

These days, I’m sure only of things I wish I wouldn’t be: I’m technically dead, I wish I were the kind of dead that wouldn’t need a “technically” prefacing it, I’ve far too much inside that’s gotten lost on the way out, I’m more tired than I knew possible and no amount of sleep can combat it. (Nor copious amounts of  **Sleep well!** cast on myself each night when insomnia rears its head.)

I don’t realise that I’m almost dozing off (first time in days that’s happened), head leaning heavily on the handrails, until I’m forced to attention with the sound of someone laughing a quick, violent laugh. 

“Fuck are you doing, Pitch? Daydreaming?”

It’s Dev. I know before I turn around, though I do anyway. He’s striding towards me in the same manner I would if I were him. (I’ve taught him well.)

I’m caught off guard, so I stumble over my words as I try to respond. “Needed a walk.” 

“Ah, yes. The incomparably intellectual mind of Basilton Pitch needed a break from the fools it is forced to tolerate.” 

I don’t want to even grace that with a response. Instead, I ask, “Why’re  _ you  _ here?”

Dev bends to his knees and starts searching under the bleachers. When he stands back up, he’s holding a book. “Left this.”

We both pause as the sun sets lower. 

“You alright, mate?” Dev asks in a moment of uncharacteristic friendliness and I stare at him strangely for a moment. 

Then I think that maybe, just maybe, I could use this. 

“Not quite.”

I’ve never answered a question like that as truthfully as this. It’s not therapy, but I feel like I’m taking a step. 

That is, until Dev says, “Why? Bad hair day?” and I remember that my issues are trivial. That, to everyone but me, I live a life to be jealous of and feel nothing at all.

So I say, “I’ve  _ never  _ had a bad hair day,” and watch as he walks away, smirking.

One step forward, ten steps back. 

The sun has fully set.

My eyes adjust quickly to the dark and I stand, hoping that by the time I get back to our room, Snow will be asleep and dry-eyed. (If I hear him walking about when I walk up to the door, I’ll just find somewhere else to go. I can’t let myself look at him again today.)

Then, from across the pitch, I hear something that sounds like a cry. At first, my ears try to convince me it’s human, but when it sounds again, I recognize it as a bleat. 

Standing half-behind a tree at the edge of the Wavering Wood is a goat and, if I’m not mistaken, it’s looking at me.

And now it’s walking towards me. 

What a night. 

I figure there’s absolutely nothing that could possibly make my night worse, so I go to it. And pat its head.

It doesn’t have horns and I wonder why. I thought they all did. (Though I pretend to know everything about everything, I know fuck-all about goats.)

It starts chewing on my sweater, so I sort of tug my arm away. 

I’m in that weird stage of tired where nothing matters and I’m convinced that if a gust of wind pushed me in the right way, I would follow where it took me without protest. 

And I know it’s going to Ebb.

I used to see Ebb a lot more than I do now.

I think it’s because I was more careless when we were younger. I’d act on every impulse and if Snow got on my nerves, I’d make sure he (and everyone in our vicinity) knew. Ebb used to have to spell us apart often, especially when we fought near the pitch. Once, she’d used  **Go to your corners!** on us and I couldn’t make myself look at Snow for almost a week. 

I think I’ve been actively avoiding anything like  _ that _ for a while now.

The goat leads me further into the Wood and it feels like the air is thicker here, like it’s a tangible object brushing across my shoulders. I can’t tell if it’s because the atmospheric magic is getting weaker or stronger.

The Wavering Wood is too magickal for anyone’s good. Half of the plants look visibly chewed-on (a clear side effect of having a whole herd of goats live among them), and the other half sort of lean towards you as you go by, either interested in your power or repelled in a way that piques their interest. 

My whole time at Watford, there’ve been stories about students in the years just above who went missing in the Wood, and I’ve never been given any reason not to believe them. 

I can feel we’re nearing Ebb’s little cottage when the air starts to crackle a bit, the magic in my own bones slightly aching. One thing I don’t think anyone could forget about Ebb is how powerful she is. You can’t really tell until she uses it in front of you, but once she does, the energy you can almost smell begins to make sense. 

I think she might be completely mental, though, because she wastes her magic as if her tap’ll never run dry. As if nothing’s sacred. 

Finally, I can see her home through the trees, and I think she’s sat just outside on a raised pile of what might be hay, at least four goats gathered around her like she’s reading them a bedtime story. (I wouldn’t be surprised if she is.)

I step down clumsily on a branch which cracks louder than any branch should be able to, and Ebb’s head whips up, short blonde hair sticking both to her face and away from it. 

“‘ello?” she calls tentatively before sniffling louder than she spoke. 

I realise now that I have no idea what I’m doing here and absolutely no clue what to say.

I let my appearance speak for me, stepping slowly into a patch of moonlight and watching the goat that led me here walk up to Ebb and lay its head on her lap.

“Oh! Master Pitch! Shouldn’t you be asleep?” She doesn’t ask like she’s scolding me, and I wonder why I always hated spending time out here. 

“Your goat convinced me I should be here instead.”

She laughs lightly while wiping at her cheeks with the ends of her sleeves. I can tell that all of her cries are Cry #3.

“Are you alright?” I ask, but I’m not sure why.

She sniffs. “One of the goats passed on this morning,” she says, and halfway through she starts crying again.

“Oh.” (What do you say to that? “My condolences”?)

“Moving on is hard, but you must. You have to.”

There’s a moment of silence where all I can hear is half a dozen breaths exhale in unison. I wonder if Ebb’s magic is what makes her so good with the goats. I wonder if that’s why mum was so glad to have her stick around. 

“ _ You _ alright?” I hear her ask, voice gentle, and I pull myself back into my body. I don’t answer. I don’t know how I would. 

Of all the people in all the world, I’m not divulging my deepest emotions to  _ Ebb the goatherd.  _

I look at her fully; the spots around her pale skin where she’s more red than anything, her eyes that look like they’re shaking, the mud smudged across her cheek like someone tried to paint it on. I look away once I realise that my own eyes are watering.

I’m way too tired for this shit.

And I’ve been staring for far too long. 

“Well,” I start, standing taller, “there’s your goat.”

I start backing up and I think my legs might start running, but then she says, “You’re really alright?” and I look her directly in her melancholy eyes. For a moment, her face is blank and unmoving and for a moment, I feel I can answer.

But, the moment passes.

I nod. “Yep. Thanks.”

I turn away and walk back before I let anything slip from my mouth. Just as I‘ve left, I hear Ebb mumbling (presumably, to the goats). 

I’m not even remotely shocked.

Just a few steps away, lying behind a tree is a textbook. And, Crowley, it's just the one I was meant to find. I was supposed to hunt it down in the library, but here it is, right in front of me. And covered liberally in mud and bite marks (presumably from the goats).

I grab it with my sleeve and plan to spell it cleaner later.

Then I rush back, shivering.

When I get back to our room, I press my ear to the door, the faint sound of running water coming through. 

I sit myself down on the stairs, set the textbook down beside me, and scowl at it. 

Before opening it to pass the time, I cast  **Clean as a whistle!** which isn’t perfect, but all the dirt is gone. (I’ll have to look past the bite marks.)

It’s a Magic Words textbook dated back in the 80s (which I think might be an oxymoron) and it reminds me of my mother, who used to teach Magic then.

Upon opening the book, I see the margins are peppered with notes. I realize now that it must’ve been Ebb’s back in the day. (A part of me feels terrible for taking it.)

Someone, presumably Ebb—in a scrawling and unorganized but mostly legible hand—had accented the pages with notes and thoughts. Most were comments on the actual usage of whatever phrase was written, sometimes about what she had learned further in class and sometimes just commentary on the words themselves; some of her comments, however, were personal. Every couple of pages, she would mention a “Nicky”, who must’ve been a close friend. And, sometimes, a “Fi”, which reminds me of my aunt, and though I know they were at school around the same time, I rationalize that it can’t be her; Fiona and Ebb do  _ not  _ mesh as personalities, of that I’m sure.

When I’m done skimming, I lean my ear against the crack in the door and all I can make out is the faint open-mouthed sound of Snow’s breathing, so I open the door, set the textbook on the corner of my desk, and climb into bed.

Lying on my pillow, legs curled into my chest, I glance across the room at the softly-sleeping body on the opposite bed. 

Then, I look out the window at the silhouettes of buildings I know too well, and I start to cry. 

It’s Cry #3.


	2. two

The next day, I leave the textbook in my room, tucked in a drawer. I tell my professor I couldn’t find one. I’ll live without the extra credit. 

I’m not sure why, but I feel like I have to protect the book. Like the memories attached to it are far too personal to let go. I’ve always been sensitive about losing history, stories going untold.

We don’t learn much about Normal history, but there are a couple books in my father’s study that address it. I was 12 when I learned of the AIDS crisis (though it was another year until I understood what the book meant when it referred to the “deviant behavior” that led to it). In times like that, millions of stories were lost. So, in an absolutely pathetic way, I want to do my part by preserving as many stories as I can.

Ebb’s is one of those.

That afternoon, I take the book back. I don’t have to follow the trail of goats to know where I’m going (though, it doesn’t hurt to have a path). I stare at the ground as I walk.

I think a bit of Ebb’s solitary life out here in the Wood. She sees no one and does nothing but deal with goats all day. You’d think it’d get lonely.

I don’t doubt that Snow would like this life; he’d get to think his thoughts and do whatever he wants however he wants, and he’d get to stay at Watford forever. He’d never have to grow up.

This is one of mine and Snow’s many differences. I  _ need  _ to leave this place. I need to grow. He would be content going to classes here for the rest of his life, always trying to fit back into his uniform, always yearning to keep this magic.

I will not miss it here when I leave.

“Master Pitch?” I hear, interrupting my thoughts and I look up. I’ve made it to Ebb’s cottage and she’s standing right in front of me.

I meet her eyes and my arm immediately reaches toward her, holding the book out in front of me like an offering. 

She looks at me, confused, so I say “I saw this lying on the ground yesterday, so I took it. But I thought I should return it.”

Her whole body goes slack like the weight of thinking about this textbook is pushing down on her. “I see. Well, thank you.”

“I read a bit, too,” I admit before thinking.

Her lips turn up a bit and even her smiles are melancholy. “Used to write in all my textbooks. Drove the professors mad.”

“I could never,” I say, because I couldn’t. I couldn’t possibly risk anything in school. It’s one of the places where I fall in line, do nothing.

I look down at my hands and play with my fingers absently.

And then I hear, “How’s your Simon?” and my head whips up.

“My…?” I have no idea how to answer that. “He’s… he’s a nightmare.”

“Oh, are you two still fighting?”

“We’re always fighting,” I say like it’s obvious. Because it is.

“Right. You’re still doing that.”

I am so confused. 

“I should be going,” I say, because that’s easier than sitting here and decoding Ebb. I turn around and begin to walk away.

“You’re carrying so much on your shoulders, Basilton.”

I turn around slowly. “I’m sorry…?”

“I don’t mean to pry, I just know what it looks like when someone’s holding too much in.”

And there it is: a door opening directly into my face.  _ C’mon, Baz. Give it a shot. _

I sigh.  _ I get it, universe. Very subtle. _

“How can you see it?”

She smiles, like she’s glad I let her in (I don’t know why I have), and tugs on her sleeve, pulls it over her hand.

“I’ve seen it in myself over the years.” 

There are some people in this world who you don’t think feel things. You think they get by unscathed, like they’re cardboard cutouts, one-dimensional shields who let everything bounce off themselves. Teachers are like this. Ebb is like this.

I don’t know why, but I’m surprised she’s ever been through anything, surprised she’s lived a life outside of her little cottage and her goats. 

I look into her watery blue eyes, and she looks like she pities me. Great. The crying goatherd pities  _ me _ .

“Would you like to sit down, Basilton?” she asks, gesturing to the two little seats just outside of her door.

Fuck it. I nod.

What’s Ebb the goatherd gonna do? Tell everyone that Baz Pitch is feeling depressed? Maybe this’ll work better than I thought.

We sit down slowly on her old wooden chairs and I look at her across the little round table. Everything should feel off right now, but I don’t have the strength to observe hard enough. 

“Y’know, I felt a lot of pressure when I was your age. Pressure to be better than I was, to live up to what others wanted me to be, to fit within the lines. Nicky was the golden child. I tried to follow in his footsteps.”

Nicky. From the book. He was her brother.

“You don’t seem like the rebellious type,” I say because she  _ really  _ doesn’t. She seems so… inoffensive.

“It wasn’t me who was rebellious. It was my feelings. My mind. I wanted things I shouldn’t’ve.”

She sniffles, and yes, she’s crying again. Just a bit, just drops, and I can tell she hasn’t even noticed.

“What did you want?”

She meets my eyes. “I wanted to stay at school forever, I wanted to stay young and innocent and happy. Everyone else was growing up and away, but I couldn’t. Also, girls. I wanted girls.”

I can feel my own eyes widen. I could not have seen that coming. Not that Ebb particularly gave off much of a straight vibe. She just didn’t give off anything. Who would’ve thought there was always another person like me right under my nose?

She continues: “I didn’t know how to go after what I wanted, so I didn’t. Until I did. I can see you want things, too.”

“I’ll never get what I want,” I mumble.

“Who makes that call, Basilton?” she asks. Before I can answer, she does. “You do. You get to decide what you do. Only you. You get to decide if what makes you happy is worth pursuing.”

“What if… What if nothing makes me happy?”

There are things that I want. A life I’ve only let myself imagine in bits and pieces in the middle of the night when no one can see my thoughts. There are things I crave like a layer of skin and I feel the breeze is too harsh without them. I yearn for these things, yes, but they don’t make me happy. They devastate me. Thoughts of a life alone, on my own whim…. it terrifies me. Simon Snow terrifies me.

“It will. If you want it, it will.”

I look down at the table, trace the grain of the wood with my fingertip.

“Sometimes,” I whisper, “I wish not to make it to the point where I need to choose between what I want and what I must do.”

I hear her sigh. “There’s so much good in this world, Basilton. And it’s all well within your grasp. Under your nose. In your room, if you will.”

My head jerks back up to look at her. How did she…?

“He doesn’t…” I start, but she interrupts me. 

“How will you know? How will you ever know? There are so many chances I’ve regretted not taking. And there are many I regret taking as well, but at least I did. At least I know.”

I’m the one to sigh now. “I love him so much, Ebb.”

I’ve never said that out loud, but who cares anymore? What matters?

“I know.”

We sit in silence for a few more minutes, just the sound of goats chewing on leaves and a near bit of running water. I finally understand why Ebb likes it out here so much, why someone would exile themselves to a place like this. It’s Eden. Then I see the sun starting to set though the wall of trees.

“I should go,” I say, but I don’t want to. I want to sit in this magic-infused air until my body turns to dust and moss. 

She stands, dusts off her muddy pants, pulls her sleeves over her hands. “I’m glad you spoke to me today. You always can, if you like.”

I smile despite myself. “Thank you,” I offer, and it’s the most sincere one I’ve ever said.

Then, before I say anything else, get too mushy, I walk the same path I walked before, hoof-beaten and dark.

Back in my room, I get immediately into my pyjamas and sit on my bed. My feet are cold in my socks, and I shiver as I pretend to read. I miss Ebb’s magic. It’s different than Snow’s, more welcoming. Her magic allows you to come closer, invites you to be comfortable. Snow’s magic pushes and pushes and doesn’t give up. Relentless.

Snow is sitting at his desk, doing work, and I admire the way his hair rests on the back of his neck, finally long enough just to brush the nape. I like watching it as it grows in every year, like tracking where he’s at, like keeping him under my nose.

Simon Snow. There are so many things I want to say to you, but you scare the shit out of me. There is so much I want to give to you, but I’m not sure how to offer it. There are so many moments I want to live though, so many lifetimes I could grasp. I want so much. 

And I almost say something. For the first time in my life, I truly contemplate it.

I don’t know what I’d say, but I could. And he could answer. And that could be the path I take. That could be where I lead myself.

Instead, I roll over onto my side and fall asleep to the sound of his breathing. Let this be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed ! lmk if you did ! (or if you didn't, i guess)


	3. three

It is May. 

So many things have changed.

And I cannot sit in my empty room anymore, cannot look at his bed and hope he’ll appear so I can kiss him again.

So I go to Ebb’s cottage.

I take the well-worn path and walk as slow as possible. I know this will be the last time I walk out here. On my way, I see no goats. The leaves are growing back in, unchewed, and everything follows me as I walk, watching.

It’s not until I get to the cottage that I see the goats, surrounding the walls, crowding the door. There must be at least fifteen of them. And they’re bleating softly, like they’re begging, pleading with some omnipotent force.

I sit at the table I sat at before, and look at the chair across from me. On it sits the textbook I gave back to her. The one annotated with bits about Nicodemus and my aunt Fiona and all the life they led before me.

I think hard about this woman I knew. Finally and truly unapologetically herself. This loving lesbian goatherd with her little home and her strength. What strength she had.

She took the chances she was given. Even that last choice she made. She made it because she  _ knew  _ it would have made her happy had she got to see it through.

Sitting here now, things feel off and I realise that it’s because the magic is gone. Her strong, potent magic doesn’t permeate the air anymore. The atmosphere feels stiff and cold, and even if Snow were here, trying to pull thoughts out of me, I wouldn’t be able to tell them to him like I told them to her all those months ago. The moment is over.

I find myself begging the force the goats are begging at, praying she could walk out of that door.

There’s an absence in the world now. This is the real magic-sucking hole. Right here.

I don’t know where her body is. (I think someone must have taken it, put it in a morgue.)

I didn’t know her well, but I know where she would have wanted to be. She would have wanted to spend eternity at Watford, with her goats, in her home.

I wonder if someone has magicked all the things out of her cottage. (They missed the textbook.) 

How much history was lost? How much of a life went spent and discarded?

If I could, I’d keep everything that was hers. Store it all under my bed. Residual magic lulling me to sleep.

I wish I  _ had  _ taken a chance like she told me to. I wish I was the one to kiss Snow. I think I’ll always regret that a bit, that I could’ve done it, even all those years ago, and he would’ve come around. Eventually.

I could’ve done it that night, lying in my bed with words on my tongue.

I wish, most of all, that I could’ve gone back here to see Ebb one last time. Maybe that would have been the push I needed. That would’ve got things going.

There’s so much time missing with Snow I’ll never get back. Even now. I should be with him. 

I know he’s mourning Ebb, too. She guided him the way she guided me, I know it. And I know he’s regretting not seeing her more. I can read him the way she read me.

I stand. I can’t take much more of this.

I grab the book, and all the goats turn to look at me at the same time, watching. They’re not offended that I’m taking the book, I think. It’s like they’re just confused. Aimless.

I clench my jaw as my nose goes numb. I can feel it coming on but I don’t want to.  _ Hold it in, Baz. _

But I can’t. And suddenly, I’m crying the third cry.

_ Moving on is hard, but you must. You have to. _

I have to.

I walk back to my room, still crying, and take a long moment at the edge of the Wood before I step back into the school, so empty I could lose my mind.

I vow then to do more for myself. I will open my door and unlock my box and take a hammer to the wall and maybe I’ll cry more.

It’s finally time to peel off the tape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's it ! i hope you liked it ! i'd love to hear your thoughts on this if u have any

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading ! feedback is always always appreciated


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